Can You Put a KDP Select Title In a Bundle?

I admit that I drank the KDP Select Kool-aid and sung it’s praises (as little as two weeks ago too). But now it’s starting to make me feel a little queasy. I guess that happens when you chow down at the buffet table too long.

The reason.

It’s too limiting.

I get that you have to make your book exclusive to Kindle for three months. That didn’t so much bother me at the time (although now I really want to get back on Nook & iBooks).

What I liked about it was that so many people were seeing phenomenal sales (up to 10x normal) by using the free promotion.

I did too. For the first few weeks. And now sales are back to whisper quiet again.

Ahh it was fun while it lasted.

But the real reason for my KDP Select hangover and change of heart … you can’t bundle Select books.

Not even when you make that bundle exclusive to Amazon as well.

And, well, that kinda sucks.

You see, I’ve been writing a lot more short stories lately (fun by the way) and while I’ll be selling them separately for 0.99 cents, once I have five in the same genre I plan on bundling them and selling the bundle for (probably) $2.99.

Fairly normal marketing right.

Except I can’t.

Not if any of the books are in Select.

And since short story collections sell better than stories on their own, that means I could be missing out on some serious moolah.

Moolah that I don’t think getting a spike in sales after a free period is going to compensate me for.

For that reason I’ll not be renewing after the 90 days is up.

I think that some good marketing is going to be much more beneficial than using the Select free days and getting the post free sales high.

That and writing more books of course.

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Thanks for the information Tracey. It is neat to see how your thoughts evolve on the topic. Short stories what are the general length for them words wise? Your full non fiction books how long are they?

Have you ever considered shorter “report” type non fiction? Shorter in length and digs deeper into specific topic. For example instead of dividend stocks, a report that talks about the top 5 restaurant dividend stocks etc..

The short stories I’m writing tend to be around 4,000 – 5,000 words. For the non fiction books my self pubbed ones around around the 20,000-30,000 range whereas the trad published ones are closer to 50,000 – I prefer writing the shorter books obviously 😉

I actually have considered writing shorter non fiction articles and putting them up. I know one author who does just that – she writes in the craft market and writes quick little craft projects and puts them up each for 0.99 cents and then bundles them for between 2.99 – 3.99 for a collection. I think she said she was making around $5-6K a month doing it so there’s definitely a market for the shorter stuff.

Thanks Tracey. That is exactly what I was thinking with the short non fiction reports/articles. Price them cheap, hopefully people buy because they are cheap and like them and buy the more expensive related (longer) items.

When you say you can’t put a KDP Select title into a bundle, what exactly does that mean? For example, if I publish five books for 99 cents then create a separate book containing the contents of the previous five (with a title such as Dating Book Bundle: 5 Books in 1), will Amazon reject the book I label a bundle?

In your experience, how does the bundling rejection work? I’m eager to try the throwaway_writer method, but it seems a KDP free day boost to kick off each new title would only do me good. I originally wanted to offer all the titles for free for one day. However, if I can’t repackage KDP titles into a new unit, then saving the KDP promotion for the bundle would make the most sense.

You can absolutely create a bundle like you mentioned. That’s what I’ll be doing soon! But if you want to use KDP Select you can’t have one or two of the books in Select and not the bundle. If one book from the bundle is in select, you have to have the bundle in select as well. All in or none in (or something like that 😉 )

If you do plan on using all the books in Select try and space out the free days to get better exposure.

Bundling is not clear to me. I’ll be finishing my last book in my 6 book series next week & want to bundle all 6 for $9.99 vs $2.99 for each individual book. Other than creating a new book with all 6 books in one big book is there a way to link the 6 books already published together in Kindle?